1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a camera and, more particularly to a camera that has a lens barrel movable between its imaging position and its retracted position that is closer to the body of the camera than the imaging position.
2. Related Art Statement
More and more compact design today is required of cameras, and furthermore users do not like any projections from the body of a camera that are likely to impair portability when carrying it.
To make an imaging lens measure up to its intended performance, a certain range of travel along the optical axis of the lens is required, and thus compact design is difficult to achieve. Since a high magnification zooming is preferred recently, a lens barrel that houses an imaging lens is obliged to be further extended in the direction of the optical axis.
To meet this apparently contradictory demand for a compact camera with an enlarged imaging lens, there are proposed cameras which have a movable lens barrel that is shifted to its imaging position projected out of the camera body during photographing and shifted back to its retracted position that is closer to the body of the camera than the imaging position during non-photographing duration such as when the camera is simply being carried. A diversity of cameras of this sort has been proposed.
As an example, Japanese Laid-open Utility Model Application No. Shou-61-188112 discloses the camera, in which zooming action is continuously performed in the extension of the full zoom travel from the telephoto side to wideangle side until a lens barrel is retracted into the camera body.
In the above cited Japanese Laid-open Utility Model Application No. Shou-61-188112, however, if the lens barrel ready for photographing is pressed backward from the front side in the optical axis, for example, by a hand, the carring in the lens barrel rotates, activating the zooming action to retract the lens barrel and thereby disabling photographing.